This
is another area I have been interested in for some time. When we built
our house at Tahoe, we used plans for a passive solar home, but changed
to a well-insullated conventional home during construction because of
construction and contractor reasons. We did add a solar water heater
a few years later that has been saving us money on hot water for years.
In the 80's when solar credits still existed, I owned a solar hot water
company. I would love to work on getting solar into the mainstream of
home construction, on government buildings, and even adding photovoltaic
to my house if tax credits were available at Tahoe (currently they are
not) and if I could justify the long payback of the investment. Of course
solar works well on RV's (see picture).